I’ve just realised all the images by the artists I put up last time are ‘blue’, maybe an indicator of my mood at the time … I can tell you they are not all blue, honest :-)
Dan who’s work was one of those I posted found a very interesting article I’d like to share with you that was in the Guardian recently: http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/child-workers-bolivia-unite This gives you some idea of the situation down in Bolivia, the dilemmas and exploitation facing the children there. In comparison to this article “inti” costs 3bolivianos, which equates to about 30p and the children get 15p for every one sold. This is far better than the return on newspaper selling mentioned in the article. We really want to help; this may be a drop in the ocean but it is something. Please support us. Every little helps. We are trying to give the children “a hand up, not a hand out” as the Big Issue would say.
A couple of weeks ago, before I completely ditched the idea of crowd-funding I had a Skype chat with Philomena (“Inti” contact in Bolivia) and Matt (“Biblioworks” contact in Bolivia) about progress we were making and next steps. I guess from the ambition of the project and the potential it has, I not only got them more excited but I got carried away on how much we could possibly raise for them. While it would be really really great to raise heaps of money I have to be realistic that we do have to actually get the right amount of people in the door who are willing to part with their money.
During the call, Philly and Matt agreed to put together some notes on what they would like to do with monies raised. I thought this would help, if prospective investors had an idea where the money would go and indeed how much things cost in Bolivia compared to here, they will hopefully be more inclined to donate/bid. They also offered to try and put together some video footage that we could use, essentially for the crowd-funding pitch but which could now be used at any/all events we hold. Through the conversation it also became obvious that the intention is to share all monies raised between both organisations. Initially this worried me as everyone involved up until now anticipates raising money for “inti” and now I knew I had to explain that it was for both. How would this go down? Would it change peoples’ interest in participating? I guess I could see it coming, but was ignoring it, hoping it wouldn’t be an issue. Sitting on this realisation for a few days I put it into perspective and accepted that projects do develop, scope changes and often things come about that weren’t planned for. But essentially our aim hasn’t changed. That I can vouch for. We are still raising money to help the street children in Sucre.
Matt talked about his organisation delivering writing and drawing workshops – giving the children the tools to get even more involved with the magazine content – realise the value in education. They both talked about expanding, creating another “inti” community in another nearby town – expansion of the idea, I guess that’s How the Big Issue spread. One community does it successfully and others want it now too. These are two great ideas and I just hope we can go someway to helping out.
